


and to all a good night

by notcaycepollard



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Christmas Cookies, Christmas Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Skoulson Holiday Fluff-A-Thon, mention of Jemma/Will, mention of Lincoln/Daisy, mention of Phil/Rosalind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2015-12-01
Packaged: 2018-05-04 08:36:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5327633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcaycepollard/pseuds/notcaycepollard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You made gingerbread men?" Coulson says very softly, and Daisy bites her lip, pokes at an edge that's halfway between 'crisp' and 'black'.</p><p>"I burned gingerbread men, yeah," she agrees a little ruefully. "Maybe I should try another batch."</p><p>"I'll help," Coulson offers. "I mean, uh, can I help?" Daisy looks at him with something like surprise, pauses for a moment.</p><p>"Yeah," she says eventually. "Yeah, Coulson, that'd be nice."</p><p> </p><p>Coulson and Daisy bake cookies and talk about their failed relationships.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and to all a good night

It's the night before Christmas, and Coulson thinks, a little sadly, that the base is so empty he'd probably hear it if there was a mouse stirring somewhere in the halls. They're operating on even more of a skeleton crew than normal; Jemma's taken Will home to meet her parents, and Fitz is sulking somewhere in Scotland, and Hunter's still in medical after his most recent run-in with Ward. Apparently the plan for tomorrow is "takeout and drinking", which Coulson would feel a bit bad about if he weren't also looking forward to it just a little.

(He still feels bad about it. Christmas isn't a time for takeout, it's a time for turkey and all the trimmings, cranberry sauce from scratch, a bunch of eggnog. Maybe an apron that says "kiss the cook". Not  _takeout_.)

(The drinking, that bit he's here for.)

He should probably go to bed, anyway, instead of sitting at his desk moping over their lack of Christmas spirit. It's late. He's tired. He's  _always_ tired, lately.

There's a crash from the kitchen, and he's out the door before he even fully registers the noise. He doesn't even have his gun. It doesn't matter. He'll take them down somehow.

Nobody's in the kitchen except Daisy, crouched down on the floor with her back to him. "Fuck," he hears her mutter, "this fucking thing..."

"Daisy?" he asks, a little out of breath. His heart's pounding with adrenaline. She straightens, turns around, flushes a little.

"Coulson," she says, shifts her weight. "You're still up?"

"I heard-" he says, looks around. "Nobody's attacking the base."

"Nobody's attacking the base," Daisy confirms, her lips turning up a little at the corners. "Unless you count me dropping baking trays as an attack. I mean, I think I dented one, so it kind of is."

"What are you  _doing_?" Coulson asks, looks around, notices the flour across every surface, the smell of spices in the air. "Are you baking? At midnight?"

"I... might be," Daisy says shiftily, squares her jaw. "I'm allowed. There's no rules against it."

He supposes there's not. Why would there be rules about what SHIELD agents can do at midnight in their own kitchen.

"Go to bed," Daisy tells him dismissively, puts the baking trays she's holding back on the kitchen bench. Instead of taking the hint, Coulson steps a little closer, tries to look into the mixing bowl, and Daisy blocks his view.  _  
_

"Why are you trying to hide it from me?" he asks her. She rolls her eyes.

"It's just a surprise, is all," she says, and then, "oh shit, the oven-" and pulls on an oven mitt, pulls a tray of slightly over-browned cookies out of the hot oven.

They're  _gingerbread men._

"You made gingerbread men?" Coulson says very softly, and Daisy bites her lip, pokes at an edge that's halfway between 'crisp' and 'black'.

"I  _burned_ gingerbread men, yeah," she agrees a little ruefully. "Maybe I should try another batch."

"I'll help," Coulson offers. "I mean, uh, can I help?" Daisy looks at him with something like surprise, pauses for a moment.

"Yeah," she says eventually. "Yeah, Coulson, that'd be nice."

 

 

They mix up another batch of dough, roll it out and cut cookie after cookie, slide the first tray into the oven. Daisy doesn't seem in the mood to talk, but her silence isn't angry, just contemplative, and Coulson finds himself enjoying it.

"Why gingerbread men?" he asks while they're waiting for the timer. Daisy shrugs.

"I was going to do a gingerbread house," she tells him. "Except, like, apparently that's  _super hard_. Even if you're not worried you'll knock the house down with an earthquake. Gingerbread men seemed easier."

"Are you going to decorate them?" he says, and Daisy smiles, the first proper smile he's seen from her in weeks.

"Of course I am," she says as if it's obvious. " _We_ are. Don't think I forgot that TARDIS cake you made Jemma."

"I ordered it online!" Coulson protests, and Daisy fixes him with a glance, because he didn't. He totally did not order it online. He thought it was a successfully-kept secret.

There are two more batches to bake, and this time when Coulson's rolling them out, he gives in, steals a bite of cookie dough. Daisy smacks him across the knuckles and he just smirks at her, eats another spoonful.

"It's raw," Daisy points out, "you could get sick."

"I live dangerously," Coulson says dryly, and she rolls her eyes again but follows his lead, eats a bite herself, leans her hip up against the bench.

"It  _is_ good," she agrees. "Maybe it's worth living dangerously." She's got flour on her cheek, smudges of it on the rolled-up sleeves of her sweater. Coulson looks, looks away, looks back.

"Did you know," he says, "you have flour in your hair," and Daisy sighs and then laughs and then sighs again.

The first batch are cooling on racks, the second in the oven and the third waiting to go in, when she pulls out a set of pre-packaged tubes of frosting, lays them out carefully, touches her fingertips to the cooling cookies.

"Still too hot," she says, "it'll melt everywhere. We'll have to wait a little longer. You want, uh, a cup of tea, or something?"

"Sure," he says, watches her fill up Simmons' electric kettle and drop teabags into two mugs. She sets them down on the kitchen island, slides one across to him, and he inhales the steam, yawns a little.

"It's chamomile," she shrugs, "I figured it's probably a little late for anything else." Chamomile is fine, Coulson thinks, just fine, and steals a cookie off the cooling rack, smirks as he bites into it because Daisy looks so outraged. "You're gonna pay," she tells him, "these are  _team cookies_ , Coulson."

"I'm part of the team," he says. "They're delicious, by the way."

"Uh huh." Daisy looks like she's giving up on the argument, grabs the next batch out and puts the final lot in to bake. "We can probably start frosting them. Before you  _eat them all_."

 

 

Daisy giggles, as she's decorating her tenth cookie, and he looks over to see what's so funny.

"I'm trying to get Lincoln's scowl right," she explains, holds up the cookie, and Coulson is impressed, because it really does look like the source material.

"What, uh, what's up with his perennially grumpy expression these days?" Daisy lets out a long breath, slumps her shoulders a little.

"Oh," she says, "you know, like... irreconcilable differences." She twists her mouth sideways, puts a finishing flourish on another cookie. "We disagreed over some stuff. Like, whether we should actually be dating."

"Tough situation," Coulson says sympathetically, and Daisy sips her tea, looks up at him.

"I don't see  _Rosalind_ around these days, Phil," she points out. "Tough situation of your own?"

"Irreconcilable differences," Coulson tells her. "We kind of disagreed over some stuff too. The HYDRA thing was just the cherry on top."

"Tough situation," Daisy agrees, pops a broken cookie in her mouth. "Here's my recommendation: eat a bunch of cookies, avoid happy couples."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Believe me,  _way_ easier when Jemma and Will left. Nothing makes you feel more of an unlovable failure of a human than being around a new couple that's, like, butt-crazy in love."

"You're not an unlovable failure of a human," Coulson says, softer than he means to, and Daisy stops what she's doing, looks down at her cookies, bites her lip.

"Yeah, well," she says in the end. "Neither are you, but here we are, right? How sad are we, icing Christmas cookies at 2am and complaining about our breakups."

"We've got team spirit," he says. "We're doing this for the team. Is that  _me_?"

"Was it the frosting suit that gave it away?" Daisy teases, slides the cookie over to him for his approval.

"I'm not smiling," Coulson frowns at the cookie. "You didn't make me smiling?"

"You don't smile that much, Phil," she says, perhaps a little defensively.

"I smile!" he protests, and she makes a face.

"You don't," she says, "you really don't. Not lately. At least not at me. Not the kind of smile where you mean it." Coulson looks up at her, wondering if she's serious, and her face softens at whatever expression he's making. "It's okay," she tells him gently, "you don't have to smile at me if you don't want to."

"It's not because of you," he blurts out. "It's not- it's not because you don't make me happy."

"I make you happy?" Daisy asks very softly, and Coulson swallows, nods.

"Yeah," he agrees, "you, yeah. Being around you makes me happy." He looks down at the Phil cookie, reaches out and snaps off the left hand. "There," he says, "made it more realistic," and Daisy's mouth twists again.

"Phil..." she says, then turns to the pantry, gets out a plain dinner plate and picks up the cookie along with another blank one. He risks a look at her; her tongue's poking out a little in concentration as she finishes the detail work. He looks away hastily before she snaps him watching her. "Okay," she says, slides the plate over, and he sees what she's been working on.

The broken hand has been patched in with black frosting, and she's made a Daisy cookie that's standing next to him, their shoulders touching. Above their heads is a speech bubble, drawn on the crockery, and Daisy's very shaky handwriting reading "I have feelings!"

"You made us into talk therapy gingerbread cookies," Coulson says flatly, and eats another plain cookie, because he cannot even deal with this.

"I made us into talk therapy gingerbread cookies," Daisy agrees, "and that should say something, Phil, because you know how I feel about therapy." She slides into the chair opposite him, reaches out and tucks her fingers into his robot ones very matter-of-factly. "It's okay," she says, "you know it's okay to  _have_ feelings, right? About all of this?"

"I don't like talking about it," he admits. "About my hand. I don't like talking about it with you."

"Oh," Daisy says quietly, and Coulson hastens to add to his statement.

"Not because I want to shut you out," he clarifies, "but I worried you'd blame yourself for this. And you had so much else going on, and I just... I didn't want to burden you."

"Phil," Daisy whispers, strokes her thumb over the back of his knuckles, and he wishes he could feel more than the vague warmth. "It's not a burden. Your feelings aren't a burden. You don't have to _compartmentalize_ them with me. But you can't keep shutting me out like you were."

"I'm sorry," he tells her sincerely. "I shouldn't have. It was just... hard. Having feelings."

"Feelings suck," Daisy agrees, morosely eats a spoonful of frosting, and Coulson touches her knee lightly.

"She told me I didn't have feelings like a normal human," he admits, and Daisy scoffs derisively.

"He told me it was my fault, the outbreak," she counters, and Coulson's aghast, because that's  _worse_.

"I can still sell him to the ATCU if you want him gone," he offers, and Daisy laughs a little bitterly, takes a deep breath.

"No," she says, "no, I'm practising this thing where I'm being the better person."

"That's not hard," Coulson says, "you've always been the best person I know," and that, finally, makes her smile.

 

 

It's three am by the time they finish cleaning the kitchen, and Coulson's tired, but he's glad he stayed up, glad he offered to help. The pile of cookies is huge, at least a little festive, and rebuilding something with Daisy, it's better than anything else. She wipes down the bench, turns to him and gives him an up-and-down glance, smirks a little.

"What?" he asks, and she steps closer.

"You have frosting all over your shirt," she tells him, grabs a damp kitchen towel and starts to sponge it off. She's got her hand pressed up against his chest, pulling the fabric taut to wipe off the smudged frosting, and Coulson can absolutely feel the warmth of it through his shirt, can smell her shampoo and sweat and warm skin. She finishes, tosses the towel into the sink, doesn't step away. Smoothes her hand down the plane of his chest, very deliberately, leaves her fingers playing idly with the buttons.

"Your shirt's wet now," she says. "Perhaps you should just take it off."

"Really," Coulson says, and Daisy nods, bites her lip a little, toys with the button below his collar until it's half out of the buttonhole.

"We should have had aprons," she says. "You need an apron. Maybe, like, one that says "kiss the cook"." She glances up, gives him a teasing look, one that dares him to respond, and Coulson swallows.

"That's funny," he tells her, his throat dry. "I was just thinking about those aprons earlier. And anyway-"

"Anyway?"

"You're the cook tonight. I'm just helping."

"Right," Daisy agrees. "You'd better kiss me then, huh."

Coulson leans in and kisses her square on the mouth, and Daisy tightens her grip on his shirt, drags him in, kisses back like she's been waiting for months.

"Have you been waiting for months?" he says out loud, breaking away, because it's late and he's overtired and he feels drunk already, just from one kiss.

"Yeah," Daisy moans, pulls him back into it. "Months and months.  _Years_ , Phil." She's unbuttoning his shirt, pushing it off his shoulders, sliding her hands across his skin like she can't wait any longer, and Coulson reciprocates, tugs off her sweater, lifts her up so she can wrap her legs around his hips. "You could-" she says, moans again when he kisses the delicate skin behind her ear, drags his teeth deliberately down the line of her throat. "You could- on the bench?" _  
_

It seems like a great idea. He lifts her up onto the kitchen bench, twines his fingers into her hair, kisses her cheeks and the tip of her nose and her mouth, again, tasting of gingerbread and frosting and tea, groans when she drags her nails down his chest and dips her fingers in below the waistband of his jeans.

"You want-" she asks, and  _god_ , yes, he wants. He presses his hand in between her thighs, rubs his thumb teasingly over her through her winter leggings, closes his eyes at the way she moans louder. "Fuck," she gasps, "fuck, Phil, that-"

Coulson very suddenly remembers that there are, in fact, probably rules about what SHIELD agents can do at three am in their own kitchen, and one of those rules involves "the kitchen is on a closed circuit security feed".

"Not here," he says with dignity, lifting her down. "Can I- Daisy, can I take you to bed?"

"Yes," Daisy agrees, "yeah, Phil,  _yes_."

By the time they get up the next morning, the team have eaten all of the cookies. Neither of them care.

 


End file.
